Wednesday, September 26, 2007

GAZA — The three Abu Ghazala fathers were in mourning, in the Palestinian way, sitting with their relatives recently in a shaded courtyard, open to the fields of watermelon and eggplant in which their children had died.The children — Yehiya, 12, Mahmoud, 9, and Sara, 9 — were tending goats and playing tag on Aug. 29 when an Israeli shell or rocket blew them apart. “They went up to that palm tree,” said Ramadan Abu Ghazala, Yehiya’s father, pointing 300 yards away. “They went there every day.”As the fathers, all farmers, talked, an Israeli blimp, with cameras, hovered in the sky above Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of Gaza, an Israeli drone buzzed in the air and an Israeli watchtower loomed over the nearby border. It was the blimp or the drone, presumably, that first identified the target.Fatah, the more secular and nationalist of the two main Palestinian movements, and the opposition here in Hamas-run Gaza, has adopted the three young cousins. A Fatah flag flies over the house where they all lived. Fatah has published a “martyr” poster of the three, with Sara represented, between the boys, by a large bunch of red roses. Anyone who dies for any reason in the fight with Israel is regarded by Palestinians as a martyr, with a rapid path to heaven.The Israeli Army said the children were playing near a launcher used to send Qassam rockets into Israel to try to kill or destroy anyone and anything they happen to land on — children, soldiers, livestock. Sderot, an Israeli city visible from here, has been the main target, and its residents live in fear, running to shelters when an alarm sounds. Sometimes they do not make it.

How nice of Fatah to "adopt" them and declare them to be martyrs since it is Fatah which is responsable for their deaths.

Here's some advice for the Palestinians. Stop trying to destroy Israel and murder Jews and this kind of thing will stop happening.